UNIDEE – University of Ideas is a multifaceted platform offering an educational programme of residential modules - taking place both at Cittadellarte and at partners’ sites internationally - alongside a series of artists’ residency projects.Based on interdisciplinary research, knowledge sharing and experience exchange, the programme fosters processes of cross-pollination to investigate the relationship between art and public sphere.

Since 2015, UNIDEE - University of Ideas at Cittadellarte has widened its activities launching a new educational programme, characterised by a dynamic, flexible structure of weekly residential modules, aiming to trigger and pave the way for a (re)localisation of participatory artistic practices in social contexts. The formative modules, delivered both at Cittadellarte as well as at international partners’ sites are developed parallel to well established (e.g. the network RESO’) and new (e.g. Connective Residency) residency programmes.

Designed for artists, curators as well as students, social entrepreneurs and cultural project managers, the modules are open also to members of the broader public who are interested in delving into themes such as: social responsibility, urban transformation, participatory art practices, demopraxy, alternative models of local economic development, sustainability within fashion and construction industries, et cetera.

UNIDEE, beside its identity as a site for cultural production, sets out to become a research centre with at its core the relationship between art and public sphere, and to represent a reference point for the exchange of theoretical and practical knowledge between Cittadellarte and the global community of social agents active in their own local contexts.

The new UNIDEE - University of Ideas at Cittadellarte is characterized by the offer of specific seminar and laboratory modules held by international mentors, which also frame the artists’ residency programmes, thus suggesting a redefinition, from an educational point of view and within a process of thematic inquiry, of the traditional concept of artists’ residency, generally finalized to the production and exhibition of works of art realized in situ.

The UNIDEE - University of Ideas programme is focused on three key words each year. In a relationship of methodological continuity and semantic connection with the key words selected for 2015 (Temporality, Responsibility, Participation) and for those in 2016 (Research, Gift, Alteration), the 2017 course will use an interdisciplinary approach to examine three more macro-themes - Revolution, Desire, Mediation - which are central to contemporary social-political debates as well as in the practices of many actors (artists, curators, public and private institutions, organisations, etc.) operating in the public sector. Read the Statement 2016Read the Statement 2015

The experimentation of the UNIDEE formative residential model is made possible thanks to support for the programme from Piedmont Region, Compagnia di San Paolo, Creative Europe, Fondazione Zegna, illycaffé s.p.a.; the partnership for long residency of the RESÒ network, the A.M. Qattan Foundation and the Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation; and the collaboration of a wide network of Academies, Universities and Italian institutions, as well as international institutions.